Access and Empowerment in the Age of Smartphones

by Ebad Pasha

Mobile phones are increasingly becoming accessible to a wider audience.
Photocredit: greenbookblog.org

The advent of 3G and 4G technologies at affordable rates coupled with abundant availability of low price Chinese mobile phones in the market has meant that an internet capable smartphone is becoming increasingly accessible to the lower and lower-middle income groups in Pakistan. We conducted fieldwork in three low-income neighbourhoods of Lyari, Korangi and Sultanabad late last year for a project interviewing youth of the areas. It revealed that although the technology has not been completely embraced by the lower income groups in Karachi, affordability and literacy were not impediments for smartphone usage.

What women do

by Haris Gazdar

Women and girls cut grass for fodder in Mirpurkhas
Photo credit: Collective team

We use the word ‘right’ a lot, but it is a haloed and distant term. In many languages it invokes truth – an aura of goodness and an assuring feeling of timelessness. A nation has the right to self-determination, an individual has the right to her or his conscience, and a child has the right to education. A nation can be hundreds or thousands of years old, and might have always had the right to self-determination, but it can practice self-determination once it is recognised by other nations. Ask any Palestinian. The individual’s right to conscience might have existed since before the day Socrates drank poisoned hemlock, but it can be practised when other individuals and the legal and political systems recognise that a person cannot be punished for their beliefs alone. The child always had the right to be educated but will actually be schooled when the community recognises this right and provides the necessary resources. Recognition, therefore, is the more accessible fellow-traveller of right. It is not only the way in which rights are realised, but is also a step towards making rights enforceable.

Aid: Who gets credit?

by Hussain Bux Mallah

Logos are one way aid agencies claim recognition, but what do they mean to the populations they serve?

Photo credit: Flickr/DFID

During our work in communities, I often encounter very interesting myths about where development aid comes from.

In 2004, when I was working on a project on social protection programmes in Sindh, I spoke to a government official affiliated with the Zakat-Ushr and Baitulmal programmes. He believed that the funding source for these programmes was “Maal-e-Ghanimat” sent to Pakistan by the Saudi government. In other words, he thought the state programmes were funded by income generated from booty accumulated during wars fought at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, which was donated to the country’s poor by Saudi Arabia. After the 2010 floods in Pakistan, we were conducting a survey on food insecurity and found little to no acknowledgement of the aid provided by the government, key aid agencies or international bodies for rescue and relief work. Most respondents believed that the work was done and funded by the Pakistan Army and NGOs. Another interesting misconception was around the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), an unconditional cash transfer programme for Pakistani women living in extreme poverty. The stipends from the programme were often referred to as “Benazir’s Money,” with a common (erroneous) assumption that the financial assistance given is generated from Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s life insurance deposits, and not state and multilateral aid.